The Use of Virtual Models of Historic Churches

Kate Giles, Anthony Masinton and Geoff Arnott

Digital reconstruction of the Guild Chapel, Stratford-upon-Avon looking east. The image shows ‘The Last Judgement’
over the chancel arch, and ‘The Dance of Death’ on the north wall of the nave. (Image: Geoff Arnott/Heritage Technology)

In recent years, heritage organisations
have begun to explore new ways of engaging
with visitors to historic buildings and
enhancing the visitor experience. This has
included the use of costumed guides, live
displays and re-enactments and, increasingly,
the use of audio-visual technology in guided
head-set tours, displays and virtual reality
(VR) models. The increasing use of ‘e-heritage’
is, of course, not without its critics. It will
engage some audiences but it can alienate
others. The use of technology also brings with
it a host of issues relating to the authority
and reliability of digital data, which have
been debated extensively by academics and
professionals working in these fields.

How relevant are these developments
and debates for historic churches? It could be
argued that the use of technology detracts from
the very particular and much-loved essence
of the church-visiting experience: the sense
of stillness and calm which pervades church
buildings, offering an opportunity for prayer
and reflection in a space removed from the
hustle and bustle of modern, technologically saturated
life. Moreover, although many of
the major cathedrals are now beginning to
explore the potential of such technologies,
the cost and technical expertise required to
produce and maintain these resources places
them beyond the reach of most smaller parish
churches. Here, the major source of information
continues to be printed guidebooks and local
history displays. Understandably, parish efforts
to bring visitors into churches have tended to
focus more on outreach and mission-related
activities, rather than scholarly displays about
the history and meaning of church buildings.

So what role is there for technology
to inform and enhance our understanding
and experience of church buildings? Recent
initiatives, such as the DVD-ROM The
English Parish Church Through the Centuries produced by the Centre for Christianity
and Culture at York, have sought to create
accessible scholarly resources which can be
used to help parishes explain the significance
and meaning of church buildings to the wider
public, partly through the use of VR models.

Two recent projects, both discussed below,
have also sought to develop digital models of
ecclesiastical sites: Holy Trinity parish church,
Micklegate, York and the Guild Chapel at
Stratford-upon-Avon. Both projects are the
result of collaboration between the parishes and
charities maintaining the buildings, academics
working within the Department of Archaeology
at the University of York, and Heritage
Technology Limited, a company specialising in
the archaeologically-informed reconstruction
of historic buildings and landscapes.

HOLY TRINITY, MICKLEGATE, YORK (ANTHONY MASINTON AND GEOFF ARNOTT)

Of the 19 surviving medieval parish churches
in the city of York, one of the most surprising
is Holy Trinity, Micklegate. This unassuming
church is set back from a busy street in the
shade of its churchyard trees. The most
notable feature of its exterior is the parish
stocks beside the churchyard gate. Once
inside, however, one has the strong impression
that its remarkable interior is far larger than
the exterior. It is immediately apparent that
this church has a fascinating story to tell.

The Holy Trinity PCC has been engaged in
a long-term mission of neighbourhood renewal
with its church building at the centre. The
programme includes an exhibition, ‘The Monks
of Micklegate’, which is free and open daily.
The exhibition tells the story of Holy Trinity’s
past. In 2009 the PCC approached Heritage
Technology and the University of York’s Centre
for Christianity and Culture with a project
centred on a digital reconstruction of the
church’s development from the late Middle Ages
to the present. In September 2010 the first part
of the digital Holy Trinity project was launched.

The Church of the Holy Trinity, Micklegate, York. In 2009 the PCC approached Heritage Technology and the
University of York’s Centre for Christianity and Culture with a project centred on a digital reconstruction of the
church’s development from the late Middle Ages to the present.

One of the early anchors of the medieval
city of York was the Priory of the Holy Trinity
founded before the Conquest and standing
atop Bishop Hill beside Micklegate Bar, the
principal entry to the city. After the Conquest
it was re-founded and given to the Benedictine
Abbey of Marmoutier in France, thereby
making it an ‘alien’ house. The church is listed
among the churches that suffered during the
great fire of 1137 and sometime in the later
12th century it seems to have undergone a long
campaign of rebuilding. During this period its
importance in the region was eclipsed by York’s
other Benedictine house, St Mary’s Abbey,
near the Minster, and it had a precarious and
colourful existence until the early 16th century.

As an institution it was a survivor,
evading two attempts at dissolution during
its final century. The first attempt was during
the suppression of the alien priories under
Henry V in 1414. The monastery avoided
dissolution by petitioning the King, claiming
the undivided English loyalty of its inmates. In
1536 Henry VIII dissolved all monasteries with
an income of less than £200 per annum. Holy
Trinity was closed, but the monks were soon
restored to their stalls during the Pilgrimage
of Grace. This popular re-establishment
appears to have gone unnoticed by the Crown
after the collapse of the Pilgrimage and Holy
Trinity continued to function as a priory
until it was finally dissolved in 1538 along
with a number of other houses in the city.

After the Dissolution the priory buildings
rapidly vanished, leaving the precinct site
virtually empty by 1610. But the priory church
itself remained, largely because it had served
as both monastic and parish church. In 1551,
however, the central tower collapsed in a storm.
Unable to afford repairs, the parishioners
abandoned the choir and transepts and
retreated into the nave where the aisle arcades
were blocked, the clerestory removed and
the west bay demolished reducing the church
to less than one third its original size. This
building, however, survives to the present
day and is still in use for parochial worship.

CREATING THE MODEL

While the touchscreen installation is an
important part of the exhibition, allowing
visitors to intuitively understand over a century
of scholarship on the history and fabric of
the priory, the process of creating the virtual
reconstruction is equally valuable. More than
an opportunity to create a church ‘guidebook’
for the 21st century, the development of a
digital resource such as Holy Trinity’s is an
opportunity to bring together all of the previous
research pertaining to the site in order to push
understanding further through research driven
by the computer modelling process itself.

Computer modelling requires an attention
to detail unthinkable in other forms of
presentation. The modeller must understand
not only the basic shape of the site in the
past, but also the materials used, colour and
decoration, effects of light and shadow, patterns
of usage and wear. What is presented in the
best three-dimensional reconstructions is
not simply a snapshot of a building, but a
comprehensive vision of the current state of
research on the site and the period depicted.
Equally important, a virtual reconstruction is
as valuable for the gaps in knowledge it reveals
as for the existing knowledge it presents.

Digital reconstruction of the Priory of the Holy Trinity. The priory was one of the anchors of medieval York
but had virtually disappeared by 1610. Elements of the priory church survive as part of the Church of the Holy
Trinity, which remains in use for parochial worship. (Image: Geoff Arnott/Heritage Technology)

Holy Trinity church itself remains standing
and, while shorn of every original outer wall,
the core of the nave and key exterior details are
preserved. The 15th century parishioners built
their own bell tower atop the northwest bay
of the church thereby ‘fossilising’ the details
of that portion of the building and providing
adequate hints to later restorers to reconstruct
the appearance of the pre-Dissolution monastic
nave. Here, then, knowledge was most
complete and modelling was relatively simple.

Modelling became more problematic for
the remaining portions of the original church.
Thankfully, the site is littered with fragments
from the monastic choir and transepts from
which archaeologist David Stocker was able
to build a detailed architectural history. This
combined with the survey records of the early
20th century restorers allowed a reconstruction
of how the church east of the crossing may have
appeared in the mid 15th century when the
priory was in its heyday. Modelling the cloister
buildings was much more difficult. Only one
stone fragment from the cloister itself survives:
a double capital of the early 13th century. It is a
distinctive type and provided enough of a hint
to allow a full reconstruction of the cloister
arcades. The cloister buildings themselves were
even more challenging as very little physical
or historical evidence survives. Based on clues
provided by property boundaries, old maps,
one surviving Romanesque doorway that had been moved to a different site, and much
comparative research the cloister buildings
were reconstructed displaying a Transitional
architectural style and retaining earlier features.

With the church and cloister complete,
the rest of the site remained to reconstruct.
The church stands in the northwest corner
of the seven acre precinct, occupying only
a small proportion of the available space.
The only non-cloister building for which any
evidence survives was the gatehouse which
stood on Micklegate until 1855, long enough
for drawings and photographs of it to be made.
When it was demolished to make way for
site redevelopment it was surveyed, leaving
an unprecedented record of this 14th century
fragment of the monastic site. Based on this
evidence it was apparent that the gatehouse
had been heavily altered and reduced in size.
Comparative evidence from other urban
monastic sites was sought in order to complete
the reconstruction. A few tantalising hints from
antiquarian maps and images survive which
suggest what the remaining five to six acres
of the monastic site contained. This included
large areas for small-scale farming, space for
works yards, and the boundaries of the outer
court. However, the details of these areas and
the buildings therein were wholly unknown.
Comparative evidence at other houses of
similar size was sought. The resulting model
draws from sites across the country. During
this phase of virtual reconstruction it became
clear that, while the layout and function
of monastic precincts in general are well
understood, there is no specific understanding
of the layout and function of urban monastic
sites. This is despite their abundant though
fragmentary survival and continuing impact
on the development of every urban centre
in England. The gap in knowledge has
prompted renewed and ongoing archaeological
reinvestigation of the site using ground
penetrating radar to locate buried medieval
wall foundations and further traces of the
layout and function of the monastic precinct.

Finally, the digital reconstruction process
brought into focus one key event in the site’s
development: the collapse of the church’s
central tower in 1551. It is this event which
guided that development of the church
building far more than the whims of Henry
VIII and profiteering property developers.
While the fact of the tower’s collapse is
known, the extent of the damage and the
related subject of the size and form of the
Romanesque tower itself are completely
unknown. Here, computer modelling has come
to the aid of historical and archaeological
research. A stone-by-stone virtual model of
the tower and surrounding church fabric was
created. This was then subjected to a ‘physics
simulation’ which modelled the extent of the
damage from the tower’s collapse. The result
is a sequence of animations re-envisaging
the collapse of the tower and the devastation
it wrought. Witnessing the ruin, it is easy to
understand why the parish did not choose
to rebuild, but to retreat into the surviving
building and turn the remains over to stone
quarrying thus triggering 70 years of systematic
erasure of centuries of monastic heritage.

THE GUILD CHAPEL, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON (KATE GILES AND GEOFF ARNOTT)

The Stratford Guild Chapel project emerged as
a consequence of another project being carried
out on the ‘guild buildings’ of Stratford-upon-Avon,
in conjunction with King Edward VI
Grammar School. This work had highlighted the
significance of the Guild Chapel, which is used
by the school but maintained by The Friends
of the Guild Chapel charitable trust. During
the 19th and 20th centuries, restoration works
had uncovered a series of wall paintings in the
chapel, which were described and drawn by
antiquarians, before being whitewashed and
destroyed. The original aim of the Stratford
project was therefore simple; to create a digital
reconstruction of the chapel interior which
could provide the backdrop or canvas onto
which the antiquarian drawings could be
‘projected’, so that the extent of the painted
scheme could be appreciated for the first time
since the 16th century. The initial phase of
the project was carried out as part of an MSc
dissertation by Geoff Arnott in the Department
of Archaeology, University of York, but more
recent work has been funded by the Department
of Archaeology’s research-priming fund.

Reconstruction of the Guild Chapel, Stratford-upon-Avon showing the north wall of the chancel decorated with
scenes from the Legend of the Holy Cross (Image: Geoff Arnott/ Heritage Technology)

The guild of the Holy Cross, Stratford-upon-Avon
was licensed in 1269 to establish
a hospital for the maintenance of poor priests
in the diocese of Worcester. A century later
it had become the dominant guild within the
town, amalgamating with the guilds of the
Blessed Virgin and St John the Baptist, and
playing an important role in the social and
political, as well as the religious life, of the town.
The chapel is located on the corner of Chapel
Lane, adjacent to the Guildhall complex on
Church Street. It is built of squared sandstone
and consists of a four-bay nave with a western
tower, a low, two-bay chancel and a north
porch. Surviving documentary sources of the
guild reveal that the present chancel is the
result of a rebuilding which commenced in 1449-50, while the nave was rebuilt in 1496 by
the wealthy Stratford and London merchant
and alderman Sir Hugh Clopton, who also
rebuilt New Place, later occupied by Stratford’s
most famous son, William Shakespeare.

In 1804, a series of wall paintings was
discovered during restoration works in the
chapel. They were described by the antiquarian
Robert Wheler, and drawn by his contemporary
Thomas Fisher, although the drawings were
only published in 1838. The chancel contained
a narrative sequence of the Legend of the
Discovery of the True Cross, in two tiers of
images, spread across the north and south walls.
The south wall also contained an image of a
bishop and a crucifix, while dragons inhabited
the spandrels over the priests’ door. Over the
chancel arch was a ‘Doom’, or Last Judgement,
with Christ seated on a rainbow, located just
above the rood, whose outline, including the
crucifix and flanking images of St John and
Mary, can still be seen above the chancel arch
today. In the nave, the restorations exposed
figures of St Modwena and St Ursula. On the
west wall, flanking the tower arch, were again
two tier-images images of the martyrdom
of St Thomas Becket above an allegorical
memento mori painting of the poem ‘erthe
out of erthe’, and an image of St George and
the Dragon over an image of the Whore of
Babylon. Sadly, despite the significance of the
paintings, they were subsequently destroyed
or whitewashed. It was not until 1928 that
the Last Judgement, over the chancel arch,
was re-exposed and ‘restored’ by the famous
wall paintings expert, EW Tristram.

No paintings were discovered on the nave
walls in 1804. However, in 1576, the antiquarian
John Stow had annotated his edition of Leland’s
Itinerary, with the following reference:

Around the nave of this chapel there
was carefully painted the Dance of Death, popularly known as the Dance of Paul’s,
because there was a similar painting at St
Paul’s around the cloisters on its north west
side, which were destroyed by the Duke
of Somerset during Edward VI’s reign.

In 1955, fragmentary traces of these
paintings were discovered on the north wall
of the nave by the painstaking photographic
recording and transcription work of the art
master of King Edward VI Grammar School,
Wilfrid Puddephat. Puddephat carried out
careful comparative analysis of the Stratford
scheme with surviving manuscript sources and
descriptions of similar schemes, such as that in
the Cemetery of the Innocents in Paris, painted
between 1424-5. He used these as the basis for
an exquisitely detailed reconstruction drawing.
On the south wall, Puddephat also discovered
fragmentary traces of scenes from the ‘Lyf of
Adam’, but he never attempted to reconstruct
the original appearance of these scenes.

CREATING THE MODEL

The first stage in the creation of the model was
the recording of over 3,500 points of digital
data in a ‘reflectorless electronic distance
measurement’ survey. Over 200 scaled
photographs were also taken and these sources
were combined to create a wireframe computer
aided design model. The model was textured
and lit using a range of software programmes.
Digital photographs were taken of Fisher and
Puddephat’s drawings, held by the Shakespeare
Centre Library and Archives. These were then
applied to the walls as part of the textured
surface. Throughout, close attention was
paid to aspects such as the appearance of the
limewashed plaster and the colours of pigments
known to have been used in late 15th-century
painting. However, the model was not intended
to be ‘photorealistic’. Rather, it was deliberately
designed to display the antiquarian records
of the paintings ‘in context’, by supporting the
model with a website in which the historic
sources and details (what computer specialists
would term the ‘paradata’) behind the model
could be discussed.

Reconstruction of
the Guild Chapel
looking west. The
left side of the tower
arch is decorated
with images of
the martyrdom of
St Thomas Becket
and a memento
mori scene, to the
right of the arch
are images showing
St George and the
dragon, and The
Whore of Babylon.
(Image: Geoff
Arnott/Heritage
Technology)

The first version of the model has now
been completed. It had not, however, been
anticipated that the model would itself become
a research tool, raising a series of further
questions about the ways in which previous
antiquarians recorded and interpreted the
evidence of Stratford’s painted scheme.
Research carried out in 2010 has revealed
important differences between Fisher’s
drawings and Puddephat’s more accurate
photographic records of the paintings, taken
in 1955. Although some of these differences
are minor, others change the possible
interpretation of the paintings in subtle ways.
We hope to be able to build these findings into
new ‘layers’ and textures within the model,
allowing future scholars and visitors to explore
these differences for themselves. Similarly, a
comparison of Fisher’s 1804 drawing of the Last
Judgement with that of EW Tristram, made
in 1928 and now in the Victoria and Albert
Museum (London), has revealed important
differences, not only in the details of the
painting, much of which had been destroyed in
the intervening century, but also in Tristram’s
minute attention to the methods of painting,
and the relationship between the image and
the underlying wall surface. These differences
reflect Tristram’s scholarly interests as a wall
painting expert and as a conservator. Sadly,
they also reveal the devastating impact of his
conservation methods on the painting. Once
again, we hope to build these findings into
the model as a series of layers of record which
can be compared and contrasted by visitors
and scholars with the surviving scheme.

Finally, we hope to use the model to
raise questions about the extent to which the
chapel paintings survived the early stages of
the Reformation. Stratford and its inhabitants
appear to have adopted an equivocal but
pragmatic attitude to the religious changes
of the 16th century. The Guild Chapel is
perhaps most famous today for the fact that
in 1563-4, the accounts of the corporation
chamberlain, John Shakespeare (father of the
famous William), record the payment of 2d for
‘defasyng ymages in ye chapel’. However, it is
far from clear which images were destroyed at
this time. Stow’s reference and new research
within the archives suggest that the Dance of
Death, and possibly the Holy Cross sequence,
may have survived into the 17th century at least.

CONNECTING PEOPLE WITH HERITAGE

For most parishes, financial priorities continue
to be the payment of parish share and the
maintenance of church buildings, rather than
the commissioning of new e-heritage resources.
However, for some, enhancing the quality
of the visitor experience may be one way of
maximising income from tourism. It can also
be a useful way of explaining the meaning
and significance of church buildings for the
increasing numbers of visitors who have no
background in church worship or history.
Collaboration between parishes, professionals
and academics can result in the production
of e-heritage resources which, rather than
removing visitors from the church experience,
encourage them to dwell longer, look harder,
and ultimately, understand more about this
important aspect of our cultural heritage.

JG Nichols, Ancient Allegorical, Historical and
Legendary Paintings on the Walls of the
Chapel of the Trinity, belonging to the Gilde
of the Holy Cross at Stratford-upon-Avon in
Warwickshire, from drawings made at the
time of their discovery by Thomas Fisher,
London, 1838

W Puddephat, ‘The mural paintings of the Dance
of Death in the Guild Chapel of Stratford-upon-Avon’,
Transactions of the Birmingham
Archaeological Society, 76, 1960

RB Wheler, The History and Antiquities of
Stratford-upon-Avon, J Ward, London, 1806

Historic Churches, 2010

Author

KATE GILES PhD is a lecturer in the Department
of Archaeology at the University of York. She is a
buildings archaeologist specialising in the recording,
archival research and theoretical interpretation of
historic buildings. She is particularly interested in the
potential of buildings archaeology to enhance the
understanding and management of historic buildings.

ANTHONY MASINTON PhD teaches historical
buildings survey and archaeological computing
in the Department
of Archaeology at the University of York. He also engages in professional practice
consulting on survey and visualisation for heritage.
He is a co-founder of Heritage Technology Ltd.

GEOFF ARNOTT MSc is a director and co-founder
of Heritage Technology Ltd. His professional
interests lie in the fields of 3D modelling
and animation of historic and modern built
environments. His clients include the Churches
Conservation Trust, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust,
Harewood House and the Yorkshire Museum.